Hello everyone, Zainab here, welcome or welcome back to my blog! For today’s post, I wanted to speak a little bit about toxic positivity considering my blog is based around positivity. I wanted to share my thoughts on it, why it’s not healthy and how you can embrace positivity in a non toxic way – let’s jump into it!
What Exactly Is Toxic Positivity?
For anyone that does not know what toxic positivity is, toxic positivity is essentially suppressing any negative emotions you have and deliberately try to block them from your life.
‘Toxic positivity involves dismissing negative emotions and responding to distress with false reassurances rather than empathy.’
CW Medicine
Why Is It Unhealthy?
Although toxic positivity can seem like a good idea at a time of upset, it can actually make you feel worse sometimes – I can tell you this from experience. When you’re feeling down, if you don’t allow yourself to acknowledge these emotions, it’s making you believe you shouldn’t have them.
In actual fact, not believing these emotions are valid and deciding to just bury them deep inside you and trying to compensate for false positivity can make you feel worse. Your feeling will just build up inside of you!
How Can Toxic Positivity Be Stopped?
Realising that your emotions are valid is a great way to combat toxic positivity. Don’t think that just because the emotions are negative they’re not as important. Make sure you validate these emotions and understand they’re apart of you, and do what you need to do accordingly!
Talking to anyone who has gone through similar emotional patches to you is super helpful, they’ll be able to understand your emotions and will help you feel heard!
A Message From Me
Since this is a different sort of positivity post I wanted to have a little heart to heart from me. I’m basically just reiterating everything in this post directly to you! Whatever your’e feeling please validate your emotions – yes, my blog does talk about ways to embrace positivity, but please know these are not substitutes for understanding your emotions. I do know I don’t talk about this enough so know I’ll be putting this message on future positivity posts! If you’d like to learn more, I’d recommend this article by UW Medicine that really helped me with my research!
Thank you so much for reading this post, let me know your perspective on toxic positivity and your thoughts on it by commenting below!
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Thank you for reading!
Zainab Chats 
I’m glad you talked about such an important topic, Zainab!
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Thank you Alina, I felt like it was linked to my blog yet I never talked about it properly!
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Very important to address this! As a teacher, we can easily fall into toxic positivity.
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Thank you – I’d love to hear more of a teacher’s perspective on this too!
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It’s practically the teacher’s job to be as positive as much as possible. The trendy term these days is to be a “warm demander.”
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Ahhh I see – it’s hard considering you have to keep a positive atmosphere, but then again you don’t want to neglect negative emotions!
I hope you were able to find a balance – teachers do a great job anyway! 😁
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Thanks for the support!
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I didn’t know much about toxic positivity, but this was pretty informative- thank you. 🙂
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You’re welcome Eeshani – glad I could help!
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Love this post and such an important thing to address. Toxic positivty is the WORST. I absolutely can’t stand it and absolutely nothing good comes from this notion that everything is peachy all of the tiime x
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That’s very true Jenny, I definitely used to partake in this at the beginning of my blogging journey – but I felt the need to be transparent, I’m DEFINITELY not positive 24/7, as much as I try to be. Knowing that negative feelings are valid is also super important!
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Such an important topic! I see posts that tell you to be positive and sometimes you just need to feel your feelings. Life isn’t always flowers and sunny days and we shouldn’t pretend that it is perfect.
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You said it perfectly! Thank you so much for reading!
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